The present invention relates to the field of baking methods and apparatus. More particularly, the invention relates to the field of methods and ovens for baking pizza.
Historically, pizzas have been baked in deck ovens for a time sufficient to bake the crust and to bake, heat, and/or melt the ingredients atop the crust. Typically, the required bake times would be between 15 and 25 minutes per pizza.
In high volume pizza restaurants as well as in pizza delivery systems, it has been a goal to reduce the time needed to bake pizzas. In a restaurant setting, shorter bake times result in increased efficiency in using the available table space as customers would not have to wait as long for their pizza. Shorter bake times should also result in greater consumer satisfaction inasmuch as many customers do not want to wait any longer than necessary for their pizza to be served. Likewise, shorter bake times in a pizza delivery system result in increased efficiencies and customer satisfaction.
One improvement to the art of baking pizzas has been the development of the conveyor oven. Through the use of conveyor ovens, it has been possible to improve the consistency of baking, ease of operation and utilization of available floor space. Thus, conveyor ovens have become the industry standard for high volume pizza restaurants and pizza delivery systems.
Another improvement has been the development of impingement ovens for baking pizza. These ovens, which are a special type of forced convection oven using columnated heated air to impact the pizza, have increased heat transfer capabilities and therefore have reduced the bake time significantly. One example of such an impingement oven is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,542 to Don Paul Smith.
These impingement ovens have achieved wide acceptance among pizza restaurants, and pizza delivery systems, especially those which deal with high volume and/or fast service. The typical bake time for the commercially available impingement ovens is in the range of 5 to 9 minutes.